1. Statement of the Technical Field
The present invention relates to collaborative computing environments and, in particular, to the implementation of modeling guidelines that support the enrollment of new community members in the collaborative computing community.
2. Description of the Related Art
The rapid development of the Internet has led to advanced modes of communication and collaboration. Using the Internet as a backbone, individuals worldwide can converge in cyberspace to share ideas, documents and images in a manner not previously possible through conventional telephony and video conferencing. To facilitate collaboration over the Internet, a substantial collection of technologies and protocols have been assembled to effectively deliver audio, video and data over the single data communications medium of the Internet. These technologies include document libraries, instant messaging, chat rooms, and application sharing.
Conventional collaborative computing includes combinations of collaborative technologies in order to provide a means for members of a collaborative community to pool their strengths and experiences to achieve a common goal. For instance, a common goal can include an educational objective, the completion of a software development project or even the creation and use of a system to manage human resources. A collaborative computing community generally can be defined by (1) a particular context, i.e. the objective of the environment, (2) membership, i.e., the participants in the environment, (3) a set of roles for the members, and (4) resources and tools which can be accessed by the membership in furtherance of the objective of the environment. Roles are names given to the people in the environment which dictate access to the resources and tools within the environment as well as define the behavior of the community members.
Community membership is not static and members may request to join or leave at various times. Like any community environment, enrollment in the community should be governed by set standards and policies to insure the computing objective of the community is achieved. Therefore, it would be desirable to have a method and system that provides models of standard enrollment guidelines, allowing existing members of the community to enroll new community members while maintaining the infrastructure of the community and without deviating from the community's objectives and goals.